


Viduidae Child

by RunRabbitRun



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Childhood, Family, Gen, Kid Fic, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-03
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunRabbitRun/pseuds/RunRabbitRun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When her husband presents the babe to her, Frigga's first thought is <i>He doesn't look like a Frost Giant.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Viduidae Child

**Author's Note:**

> "Viduidae" is the scientific name for Idigobirds, a species of passerine birds that practice Brood Parasitism. Not that Loki is a brood parasite, but "Viduidae Child" does sound a lot better than "That One Adopted Kid", no?

When her husband presents the babe to her, Frigga's first thought is _He doesn't look like a Frost Giant_.

Even as infants, Jotuns are large; about the size of a calf. This child is small even by Aesir standards. His little arms and legs are too thin, his belly too flat.

She wants to be angry with her husband, who came home minus one eye and plus one infant. She wants to snarl at him and demand why he would bring the offspring of their great enemy into her home and expect her to raise it. She wants to declare that she shall not have some jotun foundling thrust upon her. She has been wanting another child but she wants one of her own, not someone else's. She wants to send Odin away from her for daring to presume she'd drop everything and raise this _thing_.

But the babe is so very _small_. And... pink. And he has the most beautiful blue-green eyes Frigga's ever seen. His hair is downy and soft, pure jet black growing in a surprising profusion. When Thor was a baby, he had sparse white-blond hair and didn't grow into his thick golden mane for several months. This child's hair is already thick and lustrous in stark contrast to his poor underfed body.

She wants to be angry with Odin, and she is, a little. He will owe her many, _many_ favors for this, loving husband or not. But she cannot be angry at this little thing, not when he coos when Odin places him in her arms. The baby nuzzles against her, grasping with clumsy fingers, trying to burrow close to her warmth. It occurs to Frigga that he's probably looking for a breast to suckle at. Before she can stop herself she's contemplating to merits of raising him on a rag with goatsmilk to mixing herself a potion to make her produce milk for him. Her mind, always expert at multitasking, is making plans: bathing, clothing, feeding, and housing this baby... excusing the sudden appearance of child...

She sighs, resigned. She shoots a glare at Odin's knowing smile, just to let him know that the issue isn't settled between them, but she cuddles the child to her chest all the same.

\---

Lady Frigga's sudden departure from the palace after the end of the last Great War isn't much a of surprise to anyone. She had been acting as the sole ruler of Asgard while Odin was away fighting for so long. It was no easy task, holding her country together alone while the wars raged, and so no one could fault her for wanting to rest in solitude for a while.

 _Some rest_ Frigga thinks as she readjusts her grip on Loki and goes chasing after Thor, who has escaped from his bath and has gone racing across the garden.

Frigga's cabin does not seem like a queen's retreat, but she loves it. It is a humble but very comfortable dwelling, hidden deep in Asgard's forest. No one knows of it, and even if they did, they would not be able to enter the grounds without Frigga's express consent. It is the perfect place to hide a child until the time comes that she can return to the palace. It is vital that no one knows of Loki's true heritage, so Frigga and Odin hatched their plan to claim that Loki was their child, conceived and birthed in secret to protect him from any possible attacks by vengeful jotuns spies.

Easier said than done.

Frigga catches up to Thor and swings the toddler up in one arm. he's still wet from the bath and is partially soaking her dress. He squirms and shrieks happily in his half-intelligible baby-language. In her other arm, Loki responds in kind and tries to turn in her grip to grab at his brother. Frigga is every inch the elegant queen she was born to be, but never let it be said that this elegant queen didn't have the strength to hold on to two writhing boys at once.

Her cabin was built on top of a hot spring, so that its small courtyard featured a natural bath. Getting even more soaked in the process, Frigga hauls her sons into the courtyard and plunks her elder boy back into the water. He splashes and babbles and makes another valiant attempt to climb out of the spring.

"Thor Odinson, you will stay in this bath or you will have no honey in your milk tonight, understand?"

For a moment Thor looks like he's going to cry but then his little face scrunches up and he declares "Muh seamonter!"

"You're a seamonster?" she asks.

"Yes!" her eldest answers, making claws out of his hands and splashing ferociously.

"Can you roar like a seamonster?" she inquires, using this period of conversation to quickly wash Thor's gold hair, which is already quite long and very prone to getting brambles caught in it.

"Rawr!" says Thor, splashing wildly. Water catches Frigga across the face and all over the front of her dress but she shrugs it off and continues cleaning her son. Loki, still cradled in her left arm while she bathes Thor with her right, is not so happy about getting wet and wails his disapproval.

"Baby's loud." muses Thor while Frigga tries to soothe Loki's tears.

"Yes, baby is very loud." she says, concentrating on keeping the exasperation out of her voice. "Baby Loki doesn't like being splashed."

"No splashing baby." Thor says thoughtfully, plucking the hem of Frigga's skirt and dipping it into the water.

"Can you say sorry to Loki for splashing him?" Frigga asks after Loki's cries have softened to hiccups.

"For splashing?" Thor queries, still dipping sections of Frigga's hem.

"Yes. Can you say sorry to baby?"

"Sorry baby."

Loki twists in Frigga's arms and reaches his chubby arms out to his brother.

"Agya!" he says.

Thor laughs and comes forward to hold his brother's hands, only to receive a smack on the nose from his baby brother.

"Yoboga." growls Loki, swinging another tiny fist. "Guhya!"

Thor starts crying, of course, which sets Loki off again.

 _Some rest._ Frigga thinks.

\---

Loki was a very sweet baby and a frankly adorable toddler; all soft lisping words and limbs that somehow managed to be both gangly and plump.

As a child barely out of toddlerhood, he is a holy terror.

"How could you let him get away from you again?" Frigga demands, knowing that she was terrifying her handmaiden but too wound up to care.

"I'm sorry my lady, but he just disappeared!" the girl cries, her voice trembling. "I turned my back on him for just a minute and the next thing I knew he was gone!"

"You know how tricky he is! You know better than to let him out of your sight!" Frigga snaps.

"I'm sorry, my lady." the girl pleads, her eyes filling with tears. Frigga takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"Just..." she pinches the bridge of her nose. "Just go find the captain of the House Guard. Have him send some men out to look. Then go search the gardens. I'll check the libraries."

"Yes, my lady. I'm very sorry-"

"Yes, alright. Just go alert the captain." Frigga sighs, waving the girl off. The handmaiden dips into a brief curtsey before scampering out of the room. Frigga indulges in a brief moment of feeling well and truly annoyed with... well, everything. Loki really was a very sweet baby, but it seemed the moment he became a child rather than a toddler he turned into a hellion. It wasn't that he was a particularly naughty child, he was just stubborn and refused to sit still or stay in one place for more than a few moments at a time. Keeping track of him was something of a nightmare and this little disappearing act was just one in a long line of similar incidents. Frigga didn't remember Thor being this much trouble but she thinks she might have repressed the memory of it if he was. Her mind these days is so taken up with worry over Loki's daily rampages that she thinks repressing the memory of any trouble she had from Thor may have been a wise decision.

She gathers herself and makes her way to the libraries. The northwest wing of the library was one of Loki's favorite hiding places. Under Frigga's instruction, he had learned to read very quickly, already slightly surpassing his older brother in skill, but Frigga is at a loss as to why Loki always picks the northwest wing to haunt. The collection housed there is mostly made up of thick texts on complex theoretical magic, something that even a child as bright as Loki could not understand.

She does a cursory search of the other wings of the library before scouring the northwest wing for her missing son. She doesn't find him there and so performs another more careful check of the rest of the library. Loki is nowhere to be found.

She's not panicking yet, just slightly flustered. The libraries aren't Loki's only haunts, after all. He also likes the gardens, the kitchens, and the chambers he shares with his brother. Frigga takes a shortcut down to the garden to find her handmaiden rooting through the rosebushes.

"Any luck?" Frigga asks, announcing her presence. When the handmaiden emerges from the bushes, her face is very white and she bites her lip.

"I haven't found him, my lady."

"Well, go and check the kitchen garden, he likes to play there sometimes." The handmaiden runs off again and Frigga sweeps the garden. She finds Thor and young Sif there, building some kind of sculpture out of rocks and twigs.

The children look up when she approaches and Sif attempts a clumsy bow, tripping slightly on the hem of her dress. Thor stays crouched on in the dirt and grins.

"Look Mama, we made the palace!" he announces, pointing to the pile of rocks. It doesn't look anything like the palace but Frigga smiles and pats both the children's heads anyway.

"That's lovely dear, it looks just like the palace. Have you seen your brother?"

Thor scrunches up his nose (his 'thinking face', as Frigga likes to call it) and after a long pause says

"Nuh-uh."

"Sif, dear, have you seen Loki?"

The little girl stops chewing on a lock of her glorious golden hair long enough to say "Nope."

Frigga leaves the children to their 'architecture' and goes to look for captain of the House Guard.

She finds the Captain in the kitchens, searching through the many cabinets. He straightens as the queen approaches.

“Prince Loki is not here, my lady. I’ve checked twice.”

This statement, coupled with the Captain’s graver than usual expression gives Frigga pause. She’d peeked into Loki and Thor’s chambers on her way to find the Captain, and searches of his regular spots turned up nothing. If he wasn’t in the library, the gardens, the kitchen or in his rooms… then where could he be? She swiftly quashes the anxiety rising in his chest to speak to the Captain.

“Where else has been checked?”

“I’ve sent seven men to do a floor-by-floor search of the Eastern Wing and four to the West Wing. If we have not found the Prince by then we will search the grounds and the North Wing.”

“Very good.” She resists chewing on her lip like a nervous girl. “I’m sure you have other duties to attend to, Captain. You don’t need to help search for my wayward son personally.”

“With all due respect, my lady,” the Captain answers with a smile, “I find it is in my best interest and in the best interest of the palace in general for me to know the exact location of Prince Loki at all times.”

Frigga has to laugh at that and leaves the Captain to his search. The humor doesn’t last long though. She rechecks the boys’ chambers as well as her own and even searches the Weapons Vault. Around the time she makes her third lap of the library, the panic begins to set in. Loki has now been missing for almost two hours.

Frigga does not think that there is anyone in the palace who would do harm to Loki, but he is still very small and still has a child’s common sense… and there are so many balconies, railings, and portcullises that a child could climb and then fall from… so many ornamental pools scattered throughout the grounds that a child Loki’s size could fall into and not be able to pull himself out of… or the back entrance to the palace grounds. All gates into the palace were guarded but Loki was slippery and could easily sneak passed the guards if he wanted to. Frigga’s heart freezes in her chest. The thought of Loki, her little boy, wandering around the city alone, lost and vulnerable makes her skin crawl sickeningly. What if he wandered into the forest? Not everything was so friendly out in the wilds…

Frigga picks up her skirts and races to the palace stables. She normally doesn’t bother Heimdall but this is an emergency.

Her mellow dappled gelding is surprised to see his mistress in such a state but he stands being bridled so frantically with a sense of calm and responds quickly to the queen’s demands when she swings up onto the horse bareback, not even bothering ride sidesaddle. He gallops out of the stable but then suddenly stops and snorts in surprise. He trots around anxiously, almost as if he’s avoiding stepping on a mouse racing around his hooves.

“Stig! What’s gotten into you?” Frigga snaps the reins harshly, something she very rarely does. Stig Snorts and complies, taking the path out towards the Bifrost at a run.

Heimdall is waiting for her when she reaches the Bifrost. Frigga all but leaps off Stig’s back and rushes to the gatekeeper.

“Heimdall, please-“

“Peace, my lady. I know where your son is.” Heimdall’s voice and manner is solemn as ever but his golden eyes are dancing.

“Where?” Frigga demands. At this point she’s so strung out with worry she couldn’t care less about politeness.

“You son stands behind you, my lady.”

Frigga whirls around and sees… nothing.

She turns back slowly, her eyes narrowing.

“Is this a joke?” she demands icily.

“No my lady. Your son rode with you to this place and now stands behind you. “

“Heimdall” snarls Frigga, her fear and anger over this whole ordeal boiling to a head “I will stand this mockery no longer. If you do not tell me where my son is _right now_ I will personally throw you off this bridge.”

Heimdall bows low. “I mean no disrespect my lady. I speak the truth. Your son is standing behind you. I can see him clear as day. He is trying to speak to us, probably to alert us to his presence, but I cannot hear him.”

Frigga is very nearly screaming with anger and about five second away from shoving the gatekeeper off the bridge… but then she turns again and looks harder. Behind her is only her horse and no one else, not even the guards that periodically patrol the Bifrost. So she looks lower, at the shining bridge itself, and sees.

A foot or two to Stig’s left, the glimmering surface of the Bifrost is punctuated by two brightly glowing spots. It is the Bifrost’s magic reacting to the presence of someone standing on it, resulting in shimmering footprints.

“Loki…” Frigga says slowly. “If you are here… stand on one foot.”

One of the bright spots disappears.

“Put your foot down and… touch the ground in front of you.”

Now there are three bright spots.

“How is this possible?” she demands, feeling out of breath.

“ I have seen it many times.” Intones Heimdall. “It’s a botched invisibility spell. It seems your son has been dabbling in the arcane arts.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Frigga sputters. “Loki is a _child_ , he can’t be casting spells already.”

“I speak only as I find, my lady.” Says Heimdall, conceding the argument. But it’s finally dawning on Frigga and suddenly she can’t see how she missed it. Loki’s sudden disappearances, his habit of haunting the Libraries… She had seen him paging through the old texts many time but she didn’t think he could actually understand what he was reading. She though he was only looking at the illustrations…

Her mind spins with plans and possibilities. Her son is truly gifted.

It only takes a few moments for an experienced scholar to pick away the tangled threads of magic Loki had clumsily wound around himself. The moment the boy shimmers back into view, he throws himself into his mother’s arms, babbling and sobbing.

“Why didn’t you see me? Why didn’t you hear me! I called and called!” the child cries, burying his face in Frigga’s shoulder.

The queen soothes her youngest son until his hysterics subside and then gives him a stern talking to about messing around with things he can’t control. Her usually stubborn boy nods and looks contrite. He’s sincere in his regret now, but Frigga knows it’s only a matter of time before he tries again.

Later, after dinner and after the children have been sent to bed, Loki chattering animatedly to Thor about his adventure that day, Frigga finds herself wandering the halls, thinking.

She loves Loki. She loves both her sons. But this day’s panic has brought a rather startling fact to her attention.

At first Loki had just been a child under her care. She is a nurturer by nature and took him in only because he was a soul in need, not because she had an instant connection to him. As he had grown under her watch, she had quickly grown increasingly fond of him until she couldn’t imagine life with her little black-haired hellion. But in the back of her mind, the fact that Loki was not hers by blood niggled at her consciousness. Until today. Today she had truly thought her adopted son in danger and she realized that her connection with Loki went beyond fondness or a need to protect an orphan. Loki is her son. He is her _son_ , part of her. Part of her heart given a body to roam around outside her body. He is her darling boy, just as much as her own Thor. Her heart clenches painfully inside her chest and she realizes that her wanderings have brought her to the door to the boys’ chambers. She enters quietly, not wanting to wake her children. She pads silently through the outer parlor and into the bedroom, peering through the half-dark to see two little lumps on the bed. The boys are fast asleep, Thor sprawling about as always, his long limbs taking up most of the bed and Loki, curled up near the edge of the mattresses, hugging a pillow to his chest.

Loki is hers. Thor is hers. They will be men before she knows it but for now they are still entirely hers.

\---

Winter in Asgard is lovely. The air is very cold and the snow crisp and plentiful, but there’s no bitterness in it. Asgard always provides for her children. Life is gentler, moves slower, in wintertime. No major events are planned, diplomacy is suspended for the time being as the Asgardians, from the lowest peasant to the King himself, hunker down to wait out the cold weather, rationing their energy and recovering from the busy warmer seasons.

The sun is set, the dull roar of the day settled into the gentle hum of evening. Looking around her, Frigga thinks that, really, her family is no different from the thousands of families living down in the City or in the little woodland villages. The only real difference is that they sit in a regal parlour in the palace while their subjects sit in the humbler rooms of their own homes. For a time they are just another family sitting around the hearth, enjoying the simultaneous company and solitude that comes with sitting quietly with people you love.

Frigga and her husband are sitting in such a silence, Odin gazing into the crackling hearth, occasionally taking a sip from his evening tankard of mead while Frigga meditatively knits socks out of the wool yarn she’d spun that very morning. Thor has hit another growth spurt and needs new socks. She knits dark blue socks for her eldest and dark green for Loki who will starting shooting up soon and will need all new clothes.

The boys are sitting on the other side of the hearth, playing quietly (for once). Between the two of them they have a rather impressive collection of wooden warriors, horses, bears, and other fearsome creatures. Thor enjoys crashing the figures together, making battle sounds and imagining up fierce conflicts that usually end up with toys flung to the far corners of whatever room he is playing in. Loki plays at war too, but he seems more interested in arranging his little soldiers into lines, making up complex stories to go with each warrior, each battle.

All little boys play at being warriors, but watching her sons fight with tiny wooden armies gives Frigga pause. How long will it be before her sons leave their toys behind in favor of real weapons? Real battles? Thor will begin training soon and Loki, who excels in his studies despite his age, will probably follow soon after. True, they will be confined to the training rings, to drills and whatever their combat tutors command of them, but they steps from the training ring to the battlefield are few and short, in the greater scope of things.

Frigga withholds a curse as she very nearly drops a stitch and shakes herself of her morose thoughts. Asgard has been at peace for many, many years now. While her sons may go adventuring, they will be spared the act of war. Hopefully. And they are still very young, just pups. They will remain hers for a long while yet.

“Mama?” Frigga looks up from her knitting to see Thor standing at her feet. Loki, as always, stands a few steps behind his brother, resting one pale hand on Odin’s knee, watching his brother and mother with a keen gaze.

“Yes, darling?”

“How were we born?”

Ah, yes. This conversation. Frigga can’t resist glancing over at Odin, her lips curling in a grin. Her husband looks wary.

“Your father and I made you, and then I bore you.” She answers simply.

“You bore us?” Thor asks.

“Yes. You were inside me for a while, growing. When you were ready to come out, you told me and out you came.” Frigga clarifies, being deliberately vague. Her boys are young yet and explaining the… mechanics of pregnancy probably wouldn’t make much sense to them. After all, they still think girls have fleas (save Sif, who is apparently made exempt by her willingness to wrestle in the mud).

“I don’t remember being born.” Thor says with a frown.

Frigga strokes his blond hair. “No one does, sweeting.”

“Why?”

“You are not fully awake when you’re a baby so you can’t remember very well.”

“Oh.” Thor is already looking confused but he passes on to another question. “How did I tell you I was ready?”

 _You put me through nearly three days of labor, that’s how._ Frigga thinks wryly.

“You knocked on the inside of my belly and I knew it was time.” She says. Odin chuckles.

“Me too?” Loki inquires, still clinging to his father’s knee. Before Frigga can say anything, Odin answers Loki’s question.

“Yes, it was the same for you.” He says, and strokes a broad hand over Loki’s dark curls.

“Yes.” Says Frigga, feeling a strange urge to elaborate on Odin’s succinct answer couple with the strangest, tiniest frisson of panic. “After your Father came home from the wars we decided that we wanted another son.”

“I was born in the wars.” Thor boasts, proud for some boyish reason.

“Yes, you were born two summers before the war ended.” Odin says thoughtfully. “Loki… came the winter after the war ended.”

It was true enough to anyone who wasn’t Frigga or Odin. It was Spring in Asgard when Odin came home and Frigga took to her hidden retreat, Thor and baby Loki in tow. It was a lucky thing, really, that Loki had been so small. It made it perfectly plausible for him to be born the following winter and sheltered in secret until spring. Frigga knew this. She and Odin had calculated it perfectly.

For some reason, Frigga wants to tell Loki that he reminded her of winter, but for all the right reasons: his pale skin like crisp snow, his dark hair like the velvety black of the winter night’s sky. The perfect counterpoint to his summer-born brother, who is as golden as the first Midsummer. But she keeps her silence. No use building too much on a lie.

The boys have become disinterested and have wandered back to their toys. Frigga exchanges a Look with Odin.  
No use building on a lie.


End file.
